Events and Highlights
Other UCLA Events
May 14, 2024 | 11:00 AM PDT
Yaks and Biodiversity: Contested Narratives of Land Degradation in Eastern Tibet (Research Talk)
Land degradation in Dzorge County, Sichuan Province, on the eastern Tibetan Plateau is perceived as a significant problem by both the regional government and indigenous Tibetan pastoralists. Multiple large-scale efforts to restore the grassland have been undertaken by the county’s Animal Husbandry Bureau since 2010, while concurrent, smaller-scale efforts using very different techniques have been led by local Tibetan pastoralists. Although government officials and local pastoralists share concerns regarding the detrimental effects of land degradation, especially desertification, their views on and values of land diverge, as do their understandings of the causes of land degradation. Drawing on a case study of a community-led land restoration project in Dzorge, this talk details the emergent and innovative forms of land restoration efforts that center land-based community building as a precondition to environmental protection. In doing so, the paper presents a larger argument about how ethnographic attention to community efforts to build habitable dwelling places, may offer us opportunities to answer ‘what makes a good life” in the midst of political and environmental catastrophes today. Speaker: Huatse Gyal, assistant professor of anthropology at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Sponsored by the Program on Central Asia.
May 14, 2024 | 4:00 PM PDT
Chips War? Global Production Networks and Geopolitics in the Post-Pandemic US and East Asia
Based on Henry Yeung’s, Professor, National University of Singapore, lead-authored chapter on semiconductors in Global Value Chain Development Report 2023 (WTO/ADB, October 2023) and his monograph Interconnected Worlds (Stanford University Press, June 2022), this presentation offers some key empirical observations on the highly contested and politicized nature of semiconductor global production networks since the US-China trade war and the Covid-19 pandemic. In this capital-intensive manufacturing industry, governance and power dynamics are manifested differently from many other industries due to highly complex technology regimes, production network ecosystems, and, more recently, geopolitical imperatives. While some of these critical dynamics had been in play ahead of the 2020s in China, Taiwan, and South Korea, their intensity and significance became more apparent by the early 2020s. Yeung then examines their most significant implications for East Asian development in the post-pandemic 2020s and the need for strategic partnership with technology leaders towards building national and regional resilience in the United States, Western Europe, and East Asia. Yeung ends with a discussion of some relevant future research agendas on technology, resilience, and politics for the interdisciplinary studies of global production networks and global value chains. Sponsored by the Center for Chinese Studies, the Burkle Center for International Relations, and the Department of Geography.
May 14, 2024 | 5:00 PM (Virtual)
Welcome to China? Foreign Donations and Chinese Foundations (Global Chinese Philanthropy Lecture )
The crowding in or out theory primarily focuses on the resource management approach and the relationships between domestic government funds and private donations contributed to nonprofit organizations (NPOs). However, the managerial approach does not capture a political approach, which theorizes the dual roles of foreign donations to domestic nonprofits. The political approach posits that foreign donations may either augment domestic contributions by supporting the coproduction of public goods or diminish them by posing a potential threat to China's authoritarian rule because they bolster civil society. Both the managerial and political approaches cannot clearly predict whether domestic supporters will welcome (crowding in) or reject (crowding out) foreign contributions to NPOs. This study utilizes a unique dataset of Chinese foundations to empirically test whether the domestic government and citizens welcome foreign donations to NPOs. Our findings reveal a substantial decline in foreign donations to Chinese foundations since 2014. Nevertheless, for nonprofits that received foreign donations, they exhibited no effects on government funding and varying degrees of crowding in private contributions. Speaker: Huafang Li, assistant professor of public and nonprofit management. Sponsored by the Asia Pacific Center and the Center for Chinese Studies.
May 16, 2024 | 10:00 AM PDT (Virtual)
Sudan: The Lesser Known War
On April 15, 2023, the war broke out in Sudan between the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Response Forces (RSF) — led by the generals who, together, staged a coup against the civilian-led transitional government and effectively cut Sudan's journey towards democracy. Join us to learn the latest on the state of the war in Sudan, the country's humanitarian situation, and the international community's efforts to stop the war. Panelists: Ms. Reem Abbas, non-resident fellow at TIMEP focusing on land, conflict, and resources in Sudan; Mr. Hamid Khalafallah, development practitioner, researcher and policy analyst; and Ms. Weam Shawgi Hassan, feminist and defender of gender rights originally from Khartoum, Sudan. Moderator: Dr. Mohamed Abubakr, Sudanese human rights activist and peacemaker with a decade and a half of civil society experience. Sponsored by the Center for Middle East Development, UCLA International Institute, African Studies Center, Burkle Center for International Relations, Political Science and the Department of Public Policy.
May 16, 2024 | 10:30 AM PDT (Virtual)
Asian Americans and Their Communities
Dr. Min Zhou, distinguished professor of sociology & Asian American studies, Walter and Shirley Wang Endowed Chair in U.S.-China Relations & Communications, and director of the UCLA Asia Pacific Center, speaks at Pasadena City College about how contemporary migration has transformed Asian America, especially in the San Gabriel Valley. Dr. Zhou discusses cultural identity, economic development, stereotyping and anti-Asian racism, and the political evolution of a multi-ethnic, globalized community. Sponsored by the Asia Pacific Center and Pasadena City College.
May 16, 2024 | 7:00 PM PDT (Virtual)
Building A Sustainable Future: Universal Healthcare in Armenia
Please join us for an upcoming webinar discussing the success and challenges Armenia is facing in achieving universal healthcare. Our speakers include Dr. Adanna Chukwuma, Senior Director at Visa; Formerly Senior Health Economist at World Bank, and Dr. Lena Nanushyan, First Deputy Minister of Health of the Republic of Armenia. The event will be moderated by Dr. Alina Dorian and Dr. Shant Shekherdimian of Operation Armenia. This event is organized by Operation Armenia, under the umbrella of The Promise Armenian Institute at UCLA.
May 17, 2024 | 12:00 PM PDT (Virtual)
Transnational Social Protection: Social Welfare Across National Borders
The idea that social rights are something we are eligible for based on where we live or where we are citizens is out-of-date. In Transnational Social Protection, Peggy Levitt, Erica Dobbs, Ken Chih-Yan Sun, and Ruxandra Paul consider what happens to social welfare when more and more people live, work, study, and retire outside their countries of citizenship where they receive health, education, and elder care. The authors use the concept of resource environment to show how migrants and their families piece together packages of protections from multiple sources in multiple settings and the ways that these vary by place and time. They further show how a new, hybrid transnational social protection regime has emerged in response to the changing environment that complements, supplements, or, in some cases, substitutes for national social welfare systems as we knew them. Examining how national social welfare is affected when migration and mobility become an integral part of everyday life, this book moves our understanding of social protection from the national to the transnational. Speakers: Peggy Levitt, Mildred Lane Kemper Chair of Sociology and Chair of the sociology department at Wellesley College; and Erica Dobbs, assistant professor of politics at Pomona College. Sponsored by the Center for Study of International Migration, CCIS and UCSD.
May 18, 2024 | 8:00 AM PDT
CISA Annual Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference on South Asia
CISA invites abstracts for presentation at the Annual Graduate Conference on South Asia to be held at UCLA on May 18, 2024. The conference is a unique opportunity for graduate students and faculty to come together and engage in cross-disciplinary conversations about research on South Asia. This one-day conference aims to create a forum for presenting and discussing current research on South Asia from a wide range of disciplines, including the social sciences, humanities, science and technology studies, public policy, and business programs. Program allowing, we also invite presentations in audio-visual and other creative media formats. We welcome submissions from graduate students at all stages of their careers, including early-career researchers, and encourage presentations that are accessible to an interdisciplinary audience and that foster dialogue across fields. The keynote address for this conference will be given by Sunila S. Kale & Christian Lee Novetzke. Sponsored by the Center for India and South Asia.
May 21, 2024 | 4:00 PM PDT
A Canadian Affair: Pierre Trudeau, Fidel Castro, and the Cold War
A Lecture by Yvon Grenier, Professor, St. Francis Xavier University, Canada. Sponsored by the Program on Caribbean Studies, Latin American Institute, Canadian Studies Program, and the Department of Spanish & Portuguese.
May 28, 2024 | 4:00 PM PDT
Crimes, Not Just Tragedies: Reporting War Against Ukraine
Since the first days of the full-scale Russian invasion, The Public Intereste Journalism Lab co-founded The Reckoning Project, an initiative of Ukrainian and international reporters, lawyers, and analysts to document alleged war crimes in all the regions of Ukraine. Since then they have collected evidence of the shelling of civilians during evacuation, abduction and execution, electrocutions and torture, deliberate attacks on the hospitals and maternity wards, indiscriminate attacks on train stations and residential areas. Russia's strategy is to outdo their previous crimes with even bigger tragedies so that the previous wrongdoings are erased from people’s memories. How to document every story of every tragedy, family, street, and city in a way that nobody can deny it? How do we reunite truth with justice? Speaker: Nataliya Gumenyuk, Ukrainian journalist and author. The talk will be followed by a discussion with Professor Daniel Tresiman, UCLA Department of Political Science, and Audience Q&A. Sponsored by the Center for European and Russian Studies.
May 31, 2024 | 1:00 PM PDT
Feminism in China After 2013: Social Movements, Media, and the State
In 2013, Xi Jinping noted that “attention should be paid to the unique role of women in promoting the traditional virtues of the Chinese nation's families and establishing good family values.” In the decade since, the Chinese state has grown increasingly vigilant against the mobilization capacity of feminist movements. However, during the same period, China enacted laws against domestic violence and, at the urging of NGOs and activists, strengthened policies and legal frameworks against sexual assault. On the one hand, feminist and broader civil rights movements have become targets of suppression; on the other hand, the MeToo movement and the A4 protests demonstrate that the feminist community is a key player in China's current and future changes. Speaker Li Sipan, a visiting scholar at Stanford University and a participant in and chronicler of post-reform era feminist movements in China, will analyze the relationship between the state, the media, and movements, and compare the strategies and efficacy of Chinese feminist activism under shifting political opportunity structures. Sponsored by the Center for Chinese Studies.
June 3, 2024 | 2:30 PM PDT (Hybrid)
Migration, Street Vending and Social Protection: Insights and Ongoing Reflections from Argentina, Spain, and the United States
Street vending represents a hyper-visible and challenging phenomenon in many global cities, underpinning urban conflict and public debates around its criminalization, tolerance, and legalization. Facing different forms of discrimination, migrant street vendors self-organize to access social and legal protection, with their movements gaining growing political influence. This presentation builds on an ongoing reflection on representations, policies, and practices shaping street vending by confronting different ethnographic fieldwork conducted since 2015 in Argentina, Spain, and the United States with Haitian, Senegalese, and Latin American vendors. The presentation underlines the multiple strategies migrant street vendors use to mobilize, obtain support from local community organizations, and adapt narratives and repertoires of action. Speaker: Félicien De Heusch, LAI Visiting Scholar, Fulbright Postdoctoral Research Fellow. Sponsored by the Latin American Institute and International Migration Studies.